<\/p>\n
They\u2019re blacklisting people in Hollywood again. Only this time it\u2019s not Commies who are being cold-shouldered\u00a0\u2013 it\u2019s people whose only crime is to have been born in the world\u2019s only Jewish state.<\/p>\n
A gaggle of turbo-smug luvvies have announced that they will henceforth boycott Israeli cinema. We will not sully our pure and perfect souls by \u201cappearing\u201d or \u201cworking\u201d with any Israeli film institution that is \u201cimplicated\u201d in Israel\u2019s \u201cgenocide\u201d in Gaza, they say.<\/p>\n
For the good of humankind<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 or at least for their own moral standing on the dinner-party circuit\u00a0\u2013 they promise to forswear all Israeli film festivals.\u00a0 Freeloading thesps turning down the chance of a free gown and bucketloads of champagne? Things must be bad.<\/p>\n Their preening missive is titled \u201cFilm Workers Pledge to End Complicity\u201d. It\u2019s been signed by national treasure turned gurning irritant, Olivia Colman, and all the usual pontificating suspects: Tilda Swinton, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon.<\/p>\n Ken Loach is in there, natch\u00a0\u2013 that withering propagandist of community-hall Leftism never turns down an opportunity to remind the world how much he hates Israel.<\/p>\n Ab Fab\u2019s Julia Sawalha is in there too. She says Israel\u2019s \u201cannihilation of the Palestinians in Gaza\u201d has \u201csplintered the depths of me\u201d. As for the \u201cunrelenting silence\u201d on Gaza\u2019s suffering\u00a0\u2013 it\u2019s \u201cunconscionable\u201d.<\/p>\n What is she going on about? People never shut up about Gaza.<\/a> The only thing that\u2019s \u201cunrelenting\u201d these days is the Israelophobic yapping of the keffiyeh-adorned worthies of the cultural establishment. A period of silence would be quite welcome.<\/p>\n Or they could try talking about something else for a change. Like the cruel famine gripping Sudan. Or the fact that hundreds of thousands of kids in northeast Nigeria currently face starvation as a consequence of the savage warmaking of the crazed Islamists of Boko Haram.\u00a0That\u2019s my question for these puffed-up denouncers of Israel: why are you so obsessed with this one tiny country?<\/a><\/p>\n Where is your pained letter promising to boycott Iranian film festivals following the regime\u2019s slaughter of hundreds of its own citizens for the \u201ccrime\u201d of thinking women are human beings too? Where\u2019s your showy snubbing of China\u2019s film industry following the CCP\u2019s ruthless crushing of the Uyghurs?<\/p>\n These poundshop moralists are more than happy to earn big bucks in the US and the UK despite the fact that these two nations\u00a0\u2013 great as they are\u00a0\u2013 have launched wars in the Middle East that have been far more destructive than Israel\u2019s just pursuit of the tyrants of Hamas.<\/p>\n Explain that to us, Ms Colman. Why is British arts money okay despite what we did in Iraq, but Israel must be dodged like the plague? Hypocrisy, thy name is Olivia.<\/p>\n These luvvies have been struck down by that most bourgeois of maladies: Israel intolerance.<\/a> It\u2019s the new gluten intolerance. Only now the sickly middle classes forswear not only wheat but also the wares and ideas of that most wicked of nations: Israel.<\/p>\n The consequences of this posh disorder are dire, especially for artistic liberty. Let\u2019s be clear: it is profoundly illiberal, deeply philistine, for film-makers to turn their backs on the film industry of an entire nation.<\/p>\n Their missive says \u201ccomplicity\u201d with Israel\u2019s actions includes \u201cjustifying genocide\u201d. So even Israeli directors and actors who think their nation is justified in going after the monsters who carried out the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust are fair game for boycotting.<\/p>\n That is cruel, unfair, dogmatic and, in my view, bigoted. Such chauvinistic intolerance for foreign creatives who simply have a different opinion is the very antithesis of cultural freedom. These Philistines for Palestine bring shame on the film world.<\/p>\n